Ten Thousand Things
Multicultural Webfinds

"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

10th Anniversary Gung Haggis Fat Choy --Toddish McWong’s Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner Spectacular in Vancouver

My chow mein lies over the ocean
My chow mein lies over the sea
My chow mein lies over the ocean
Oh, bring my chow mein back to me!

–Toddish McWong's Asian culinary twist on an old Scottish favorite

Gung Haggis Fat Choy! Toddish McWong's Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner.

Join us Sunday January 27, 2008
for an extravagant & quirky intimate banquet, full of good food, music and poetry
See www.gunghaggisfatchoy.com
5:30pm reception and appetizers
6:00 dinner
Floata Restaurant
#400 – 180 Keefer Street
Vancouver Chinatown

A quirky fusion/mix/buffet of Scottish-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian culture featuring a 10 course Chinese banquet dinner including deep-fried haggis wun tun, and accompanied by music and poetry performances embracing and defying Canada’s unique Scottish-Chinese heritage.

10 years, 12 dinners, 3000 people, Vancouver, Seattle + TV special

Who would have thought that 16 people in 1998 in a crowded living room started a tradition that now serves 500 people at the biggest Chinese Restaurant in North America, and has spun off the Gung Haggis Fat Choy CBC Vancouver TV performance, and the SFU Gung Haggis Fat Choy Festival.
Creator Todd Wong has been interviewed by BBC Radio Scotland, local and national media. In 2007, with bagpiper Joe McDonald and No Luck Club hip hop master Trevor Chan, they created Gung Haggis RAP Choy, a rapper’s reading of Robbie Burns’ immortal “Address to a Haggis.” (Trevor Chan's No Luck Club "Chinese Head Tax Mashup" is also well worth a listen)

Today Gung Haggis Fat Choy is a fundraiser event for the ASIAN CANADIAN WRITERS' WORKSHOP the new HISTORIC JOY KOGAWA HOUSE SOCIETY and the Gung Haggis Fat Choy Dragon Boat team, all helping to create positive examples of inter-culturalism in our community!

Ever had Haggis Dim Sum appetizers?

This is the event that put deep-fried haggis won-ton on the map, and created a haggis dim sum appetizer buffet in 2007. Imagine haggis-stuffed shrimp dumplings and haggis spring rolls.

Sing along to "Scotland the Brave," and Burns’ perennial favorite, "Auld Lang Syne” and the culturally fused "My Chow Mein Lies Over the Ocean," and "When Asian Eyes Are Smiling," plus many more surprises!

Featured performers for 2008 include:

Celtic band Blackthorn, Vancouver poet Laureate George McWhirter, bagpiper Joe McDonald and Brave Waves, and a special sneak preview of playwright Grace Chin's "The Quickie" + many special and surprise guest performers!

Gung Haggis Fat Choy does more than mix East and West. It blends them together and turns them upside down and sideways. It highlights Canada's Scottish and Chinese heritage and pioneers. It breaks down barriers and is an impressive forum for the emerging inter-cultural Canada where everybody can claim and celebrate Chinese and Scottish culture and everything in-between.

GUNG HAGGIS FAT CHOY COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS
Special bonus event
January 23, 2008
Alexis Kienlen launches her poetry book She Dreams in Red: ( travelpoems from China to Indonesia to Mongolia to Tibet) at Radha 728 Main St from 7-9 pm. Admission is free.
January 25th, 2008.
SFU Gung Haggis Fat Choy Canadian Games
organized by SFU Recreation Department
SFU Convocation Mall, Burnaby Campus – Look for Dragon Cart racing, Haggis eating contest + human curling event.
January 27th, 2008
Gung Haggis Fat Choy: Toddish McWong’s Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner. Floata Restaurant, Vancouver Chinatown.
January 28th, 2008.
Gung Haggis Fat Choy World Poetry Night
Vancouver Public Library Central Branch
– featuring bagpipes, Swedish-Chinese- Scottish- Irish-Canadian poet Fred Wah + Vancouver Poet Laureate George McWhirter + singalongs. Admission is Free

Todd without his lion's head mask

For more information contact
Todd Wong
Email gunghaggis@yahoo. ca
www.gunghaggisfatchoy.com

Previous ........... Next
Back to Ten Thousand Things index page...

Feedback? tenthousandthings[AT]kyotojournal.org